Into Magic (1)

Into Magic

All day Thursday, January 1, 1987, it had rained, and for much of the day, I sat in my dining room looking out the windows, watching the silver sheets of rain come down, ending what had been a prolonged drought. A few days later, on the 10th, again it rained all day. In retrospect, that rain symbolized an access of spirit, a coming end to the prolonged drought I had been living so long.

At that time I was still in my first year as associate editor for the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, writing editorials, columns, and book reviews. I was very happy to be able to finally make a living writing, after years stranded doing work for which I was less fitted. Yet when it came to what I considered serious writing – a novel I had been working on for eight years, an historical study of Thoreau and Emerson I had begun even earlier – I dried up. Why? And I had other problems, including my relationships with my wife and our young children. And, in particular, what appeared to be the premature onset of old age.

I was going through repeated periods of great pain. Any little thing, like building a cold frame for some lettuce seedlings, reduced me to near immobility. I couldn’t sit, couldn’t stand, couldn’t lie down, in any comfortable way. One Tuesday in mid-January, my chiropractor showed me why.

She had sent me to be x-rayed, and here were the results: The X-rays showed extensive arthritis, calcium deposits on the bones looking like white frosting. In addition, there were other problems, but by itself the arthritis was a serious problem, and nothing could be done about it. I was only forty, and apparently I was beginning to become an old man,. I was used to struggling with asthma, but this was a new challenge, and I had no idea how to deal with it.

Along with the pain came depression, I not realizing that this was the low point. Because, the following week came a miracle, and an awakening, and the beginning of another life, entirely unanticipated.

It was my wife’s suggestion that I watch Out on a Limb, a two-part TV special about actress Shirley MacLaine’s spiritual search. That she would make the suggestion was odd, because (1) she knew I didn’t like television, and (2) she found the subject of psychic experiences threatening. Still, she made the suggestion and I have always been glad, though she probably came to regret it.

I didn’t have any particular interest in Shirley MacLaine. But I was in pain, without anything better to do. Why not watch a little TV? So on Monday night (Jan. 19), I watched the first night’s program (three hours’ worth) with intense interest—and the damnedest thing happened. When I got up to go to bed, I suddenly realized that for the first time in days, my back didn’t hurt! What’s more—to jump the gun on the story—the arthritis of the spine disappeared, and never troubled me again. I had years of back pain yet ahead, but never again from arthritis.

I watched the rest of the two-part special the following night. No further miracles, but I can take a hint, if it’s broad enough. The first Higher Self Seminar was going to be held in nearby Virginia Beach (in honor of Edgar Cayce) that coming weekend. It would cost $300, no small amount for us then, and I wondered if I was going to be taken for a ride, but decided to attend, and again my wife supported the decision. And so I was one of the six hundred-plus people in the good-natured crowd that filed into the Cavalier Hotel in Virginia Beach Saturday morning

The newspaper ad had said that the seminar would offer “group meditations, techniques in visualization, chakra-raising sessions, questions and answers relating to past-life recognition, how we create our own reality, and the final connection with the Higher Self.” I saw, clearly enough, the expert manipulation that had been used in the wording of the ad, but reading it again all these years later, I judge that what she offered is what she delivered.

She was a seasoned showbiz professional. She knew not only how to employ sound-effect techniques but how to mobilize and use group energy. In the very first visualization exercise, her voice led us to visualize crossing a river to where the Higher Self would be waiting. To my astonishment, there indeed was an image, one I never would have consciously chosen.

My Higher Self appeared as a unicorn! A unicorn, a magical, mythological beast. For the first time, I realized why my father—who could be symbolized as a loyal, dependable workhorse—had always been so dismissive of my beliefs. He thought I was “really” a horse who thought he was a unicorn. My unworldliness had worried him. By telling me (against my active resistance) “the way things are,” he had tried to protect me. The gift of the situation, besides all the practical things he did teach me, was that living with him provided me with protection against (that is, understanding of) skeptics and cynics.

On the other hand, I realized that weekend, I’m not a horse. I am what I am! I am different, and that difference is to be prized. This visualization, more than any single event in my life, removed my shame and doubt about who and what I was. (Also, I got a vision of myself as translator. Somebody to comprehend the time and the energy and the pattern, and help everyone deal with them. Somebody who is empowered from within, one in touch with all levels. Oddly, by the time I got confirmation of this at The Monroe Institute five and a half years later, I had long forgotten it.)

When I came home Sunday night, I called the editor of our Commentary section and asked if he would like a first-hand account of the Higher Self Seminar for next Sunday’s paper. He said he would, but he would need it by Tuesday, and I told him that wouldn’t be a problem. On Tuesday morning handed him 53 column-inches of copy. He asked me to trim it to 40 inches, which I did, and expressed himself satisfied. Then it was time for second thoughts. On the Friday before publication, when I saw the article in page proofs, with my suggested headline made into a subhead and “In the spirit” used as the head, I thought, “Oh God, what have I done?” Nothing in the piece was phony, shallow or wrong, though it might have been more carefully hedged. But it was so open and unprotected! I suddenly wasn’t so sure I wanted it so widely distributed.